


Tiny Tony and Broken Bucky

by LiulfrLokison



Series: The Snake Handler [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Recovering, Crack, De-Aged Tony Stark, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, Ninja tony, Snark
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-18 23:41:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9407954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiulfrLokison/pseuds/LiulfrLokison
Summary: (The first chapter was based off a tumblr prompt that I just had to write.)The shenanigans that a de - aged Tony gets into, while Bucky - Winter - is still recovering from his conditioning with HYDRA. Luckily Dante is there to help when things get weird, and they certainly get weird.





	1. Error 101: Tired Doesn’t Equal Training

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Based off a tumblr prompt that I just had to write.)
> 
> Steve made a grave error putting Bucky - no - Winter in charge of a eight year old Tony Stark. While he may be de - aged, Tony was still a handler in Winter's eyes. Plus his orders from Dante to keep said Stark safe, meant giving the genius training. 
> 
> A little too much training.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: The Winter Soldier is on babysitter duty, and he knows - Captain Rogers explained it five times - that it’s important for tiny!Tony to tire himself out before bedtime. The Winter Soldier does the obvious, age appropriate thing: he puts tiny!Tony through the average Red Room trainee routine every evening for a couple of hours. Several weeks go by and suddenly the Avengers have to deal with a tiny!Tony ninja. The team is not impressed.
> 
> (This was petroltogo's prompt from tumblr and they had a few more that I might attempt in the future).

“What in the name of god, made you think it was a good idea to place a man, who still has to ask permission to use the kitchen, in charge of an eight year old?”

None of the team could bear to look up from the floor at the man scolding them, despite the fact that he was the one sitting down and had said eight year old in his lap. 

Winter wasn’t any help, the man deferring to his former handler with ease, which showed that he still hadn’t flushed the protocols out of his head and that really didn’t help them in pleading their case. 

“And now you have a ninja Tony on your hands. What fun that must be.” 

Steve wanted to do nothing more than to melt into the floor, seeing as he was the one solely responsible for their current predicament. 

_Two weeks prior . . ._

“You’re sure you got everything?” Steve asked from where he was sitting on the floor, lacing the boots of his uniform up, a scowling Bucky Barnes standing behind him with the currently eight year old Tony sitting on his shoulders. 

“Yes, I have. JARVIS will remind me if I forget anything.” Bucky (who insisted on being called Winter) replied while Tony was leaning on his head, yawning loudly as Steve grabbed the duffle bag sitting by the door. As reluctant as the team was to leave the de – aged Tony and the still recovering Winter Soldier in the Tower alone, someone had to deal with the HYDRA base that was going to launch an attack at some point during the month. 

Dante had been kind enough to inform them about the situation, as he was still able to access the mainframe despite revealing to HYDRA that he was never on their side. Tony had been eager to hire Dante’s team of hackers, but Dante didn’t work in the tower himself. Apparently it was for personal reasons, but Natasha was pretty sure there was some history between Tony and Dante that neither man was willing to bring up. 

Dante did sometimes drop by the Tower in order to check on Bucky, while also helping out with the recovery process as he had been Bucky’s handler for several years. 

“We’ll keep in touch, and let you know if we need radio silence.” 

The other’s were waiting for him, so as soon as Bucky nodded, Steve was out the door. 

And because he was in such a rush, he missed hearing the one thing that would have made him turn around and prevent the whole ordeal from happening. 

“So, what does Rogers mean by get you tired?”

-o0o-

It had been foolish on Steve’s part to leave Bucky in charge of Tony, who still happened to possess his adult mind and most likely would have convinced Bucky to let him do things that his eight year old body certainly couldn’t handle. 

JARVIS had been happy to inform them that there had been no accidents, Bucky had been deferring to Tony as the main handler (in order to cope with a new residence) and Dante had been quite firm on the matter of Bucky keeping his main handler safe. It was part of the recovery process, and so having the accident prone man in the form of an eight year old had made Bucky even more wary than before. 

However, when the team had returned from the mission, bruised and battered, but relatively uninjured, they really should have seen the ambush coming when neither Bucky or Tony greeted them when they got back.

Luckily none of them had been wearing their battle gear, having changed and showered before heading back to the Tower. 

A flurry of glitter bombs fell from the ceiling, and through the furious shrieking they all made as the glitter was somehow slimy, those among them with heightened senses had heard the childish giggling from the air vents. 

Throughout the next week, they were pranked, assaulted and partially traumatized, but none of them ever caught even a glimpse of either Bucky or Tony. 

When even the merciless and ice cold hearted Black Widow broke down into a sobbing fit from frustration, they called in the one person that would be able to handle the tag team of pranksters.

Needless to say, when Dante arrived, the team had almost wept in joy before wailing to the hacker of their woes. 

Once JARVIS let Dante have full access to the tower, the ex – HYDRA agent took not even an hour to hunt down the terrible duo. 

Thus, leading to the current lecture the team was receiving. 

-o0o-

“Winter, while I’m glad you’ve taught Tony how to defend himself, do remember he has the body of an eight year old. Which means endless amounts of energy. Add that and his hyper – active brain, that can lead to total disaster. We’re just lucky JARVIS denied him access to the labs.” 

The team shuddered, not wanting to think of what monstrosity Tony might have created instead. 

“I guess you haven’t found a lead on how to get Tony back to his normal age yet?” Dante questioned while Bucky took a pouting Tony to the kitchen, seeing as it was easier to get him to eat than when he was an adult.

“No, the technology that was used is completely busted, unless we can somehow find an alternative, Tony might have to grow up again naturally.”  
None of them were looking forward to Tony going through the stages of puberty, they were well aware of his MIT days. 

Dante seemed to be thinking along the same lines, and the hacker let out a heavy sigh. 

“Luckily for you, I know a guy. He might be able to get Tony’s body back to his adult age again, but he’s a magic user.” 

The only magic user the team knew about was Loki, and none of them, not even Thor, would give the trickster such trust in regard of one of their teammates. 

“And who, exactly, it this guy you know?” Natasha asked with a frown, Dante’s associates were very secretive and not even SHIELD could find out who his contacts were.

Dante just grinned, leaning forward in his seat with arms crossed over his chest. 

“Are you familiar with a Doctor Stephen Strange?”

-o0o-

Four days later, and they had their old Tony back. 

Except, apparently even the Sorcerer Supreme couldn’t fully negate the effects of Tony’s de – aging.

It was quite terrifying to see a wacky, extravagant inventor in his 40’s with the skills of a ninja and the hyper – active energy of a young child. 

-o0o-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was fun to write, and I wish I could have written more, but most likely in the future there will be more Tiny Tony and Broken Bucky. 
> 
> LiulfrLokison out! :3


	2. Error 102: The Training Did Pay Off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another day, another villain to deal with . . . Except Tony is once again bite - sized and kicking villain butt. 
> 
> And the Tower needs to be cleaned up yet again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Sorry! It's been a while since I've touched this story and I had like 3/4 of the chapter sitting there, noticed this fic had 30 subscriptions, so . . . perhaps I should update it?_
> 
> _Disclaimer: I own no characters you recognize in this story, besides Dante (he is mine and no one shall take him from me), the franchise of course belongs to MARVEL (I still refuse to acknowledge Civil War, it did not happen)._

This was not how today was meant to play out. 

Like a typical Tuesday, there was yet another attack on Manhattan by some wannabe criminal, or criminals in this case. 

They seemed to be an off – shoot branch of AIM, who they believed to have gone underground after the Extremis incident a couple of months ago which resulted in the death of Killian. (Tony had been quite happy about that as the guy had been hounding him for weeks to work on the project). 

Tony had been in no shape to pilot the suit, he had been having massive migraines from working on the BARF system that was coming along rather smoothly, but he still hadn’t worked out how to tweak it to stop the after effects that were quite similar to a very painful hangover. 

Bucky – no, Winter – (they still weren’t used to addressing the ex – HYDRA agent by that handle), was in the Tower with Tony while they went to deal with the AIM agents that were terrorising the city. 

However, it turned out to be a diversion, and in fact they had been after Tony the entire time. 

It seemed that his time as a eight year old child had been leaked out through the SHIELD files (Fury was still refusing to let Tony redesign the systems as he wasn’t fond of JARVIS tearing through the files to find stuff every time Tony felt like hacking into the mainframe), and AIM happened to have on hand, some sort of de – aging gun that had been a project on the backburner as they really didn’t have a use for it at the time. 

But now they had used the perfectly functional and working gun to de – age Tony to (yet again) eight years old, but luckily the memory erasing function had been so unstable that it didn’t take effect, causing the gun to explode. 

While the agents had been dazed from the small mini – explosion caused by their own weapon, child Tony had scrambled out of sight and into the air vents. 

One thing Tony had learned during his time as a child, was that it was very hard to manoeuvre in clothes that swamped you. They had kept the children clothes on hand in case this sort of thing happened in the future, so it wasn’t too hard for Tony to access the room and change into clothes that wouldn’t trip him up, before finding a good vantage point to begin his attack. 

JARVIS was working to get in touch with the other Avengers and warn them about the current situation in the Tower. 

The AIM agents wouldn’t know what hit them.

-o0o-

Things . . .

Could have gone better. 

Winter found himself both proud of Tony, and ashamed of himself. 

Tony’s training certainly had paid off, the AIM goons were battered and bruised by the time they managed to recover from the temporary blindness caused by the gun exploding on them. Tony had gotten a few good hits in and had led the enemy on a wild goose chase through the tower, using the high vantage points that had been built into the Tower just for Clint to land heavy blows that he could pull off as an adult, but right now he didn’t have the right body mass to put that much force behind his hits. 

He had managed to knock a good majority of the ten intruders out, Tony had just dropped a heavy vase (ironically it was a gift that Thor had brought back to ‘brighten’ up the lounge and hadn’t considered it as a weapon to bludgeon one’s skull in) from a bookshelf onto one man’s head and thrown a couple of knives at another. 

However this still was a child against a team of trained operatives, and at some point even Tony (with his abundant amounts of energy and a brain that could rival a supercomputer) had to rest at some point.

During the resulting struggle, there was a horrifying sound of bone snapping and a cry of pain, setting off Winter’s protocols and soon enough there were many bodies staining the once pristine carpet with crimson that was not going to wash out anytime soon.

(Although Tony would bemoan the carpet later, his currently broken arm was more important). 

In his mad dash to the infirmary, Winter bypassed both the Widow and the Hawkeye in the hallways (he still deferred to the teams codenames when he was in a panic).

He would find out later that when communications with the Tower had cut out, they had fought their way back but had been deterred by enemy forces but managed to shake them off to return to the Tower. Rogers and Thor had been left to deal with the remaining forces along with the Hulk (who had been eager to release his anger once finding out that his science buddy had been attacked) and the agents that got in the green beasts way learned a lesson in pain that day. 

Luckily Dante had run him through basic first aid (the hacker had been livid when he returned from a mission with a broken wrist but had left it be since he didn’t know how to patch himself up), so Winter was able to set Tony’s arm into a splint, making sure the mini – sized inventor took pain killers (Tony had a high pain tolerance, no matter what his current size was) and was generally patched up. 

By the time that Doctor Banner returned to the Tower, Tony was fast asleep as the adrenaline rush left his system, allowing a painless and quick check up before the Doctor left to clean up from the battle.

The other Avengers had minor scrapes and bruises, but Tony was the worst off of the group.

In the panic that ensued, JARVIS was wise enough to contact Dante, who apparently had been fending off a cyber attack by AIM who had been trying to get into Stark Industries for their old weapon plans (that Tony had buried deep into the archives).

The man was utterly pissed when he turned up at the Tower, he had been running on very little sleep as the cyber attack had been going on for three days and he had only managed to clear it up an hour ago when AIM had focused on attacking the Tower. 

Winter was quite aware of how Dante reacted when he was this mad, and so stayed out of the way as he utterly tore into the remaining AIM agents who hadn’t been killed in the crossfire. 

The team then realized how dangerous Dante truly was and made a note to never piss the man off in the future. 

-o0o-

A week after the attack, Tony was back to normal (Strange wasn’t able to change him back until his injuries were healed) and already was joking about the incident. 

It didn’t help that Clint had managed to find the security tapes and posted a video of Tony kicking the AIM agents asses despite being the size of an eight year old again. 

Of course since it was a video of Tony Stark (not to mention the fact that he was an Avenger) the video went viral. 

Tony would have found the situation funny if not for the fact that it also documented his arm getting broken, also becoming an incentive to ask Winter for some more training sessions.

All in all, Tony had survived another encounter with being de – aged, and the team hoped this would be the last time this sort of incident would occur. 

But apparently . . .

Loki hadn’t got that memo. 

-o0o-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _A/N: Whelp, hope you enjoyed it, there will be a third chapter in the works, but that may take a while . . ._
> 
> _LiulfrLokison out! :3_


	3. Error 103: Loki Should Have Expected Tony To Be A Troublesome Child

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Loki believes he has found a way for his schemes to finally work, by removing one variable from the team.**
> 
> **But not eliminating, only removing temporarily.**
> 
> **Stark was far too valuable to kill.**
> 
> **However, he didn't realize how much trouble child Stark actually was.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _So I finally updated this one! YAY!_
> 
> _Well, that's enough from me, here's the long awaited third chapter._
> 
> Disclaimer: Avengers belong to Marvel, I have no claim to their ownership. Only Dante, Dante is mine.

He had thought it would have been a brilliant plan at first.

Iron Man had been the key member of the team that always thwarted his plans, he could deal with his brother any day, as he ‘the brute’ relied on his hammer and pure brawn, the Captain he could outsmart when it came to tactics. The Widow was a bit tougher to deal with, and the Hawk he could avoid. The Hulk was easy enough to outmanoeuvre if he saw him coming fast enough.

(His ankle still twinged every time the green rage monster turned up though).

But it was Iron Man that he could not throw off his tail.

The two of them were oh so similar, Stark could understand his plans on a level that no one else could, and so if his plans were to succeed, he needed Stark out of the picture.

Seeing as how the Man of Iron had been put out of commission twice so far due to being de – aged to a point he wasn’t that much of a threat (although he did note even as a child Stark could still outsmart those with lesser intelligence given the recordings he found on the Midgardian’s social media sites), that was the starting point of his brilliant scheme to keep Iron Man from foiling his next attempt at riling up the New Yorkers.

Really, at this point he only attacked for the sheer thrill of irritating his brother, he wasn’t feeling like world domination at all since that was a hassle he rather not face, leading the masses meant no time for causing trouble, and it was oh so rewarding when a scheme worked out just as planned.

However, he really should have taken into account that no matter what age Stark was, he was still a highly intelligent life form that knew just how to piss him off.

-o0o-

The entire team were freaking out when they discovered that Tony had gone missing.

Now, while this was common to some degree, Tony always left a memo or gave some indication that he might run off for a coffee break or he needed some air, but none of them had seen any sort of signs or indications that he was on one of his ‘freedom tangents’, and so of course when they found his lab empty, JARVIS unable to locate his creator . . .

Que the freak – out.

Only Winter seemed to keep himself calm (although on the inside he was silently screaming into the Void), and he did the one thing they really should have done in the first place.

They contacted Dante who was more than happy to locate Tony (they still had no idea how the man had a bigger network than Stark Industries but he did), and promptly informed them with a dead pan expression “Your resident trickster is responsible. And he’s de – aged Tony. But I wouldn’t worry, Loki will probably return him within the next 24 hours.” Before ending the video call.

While Dante’s words reassured them, knowing that Tony was in the hands of Loki . . .

They still panicked.

-o0o-

It had seemed like a good plan at first.

Stark had been working for a good solid 40 hours, and so wasn’t as quick to react when Loki had appeared in his lab.

Knocking the AI out for a few split seconds was easy, as he de –aged the insufferable inventor and disappeared with his cargo, landing in his current lair that he had created a month ago when Stark tracked down his last one, of course the Avengers raided it but he had fled once gathering his belongings.

The moment Stark woke though . . .

Odin’s Beard, the child was irritating!

While he could appreciate Stark’s thirst for knowledge, having an eight year old child asking multiple questions without needing to breathe, rifling through his books, inspecting every nook and cranny of the place, could cause the most calmest of monks to blow their fuse.

However, as Loki had lived with Thor for a brother, he was very close to that fuse snapping, only just.

From what he was aware of Stark’s home life (the newspapers were very informative), he could see a man who grew up neglected by his parents, growing up turning to knowledge rather than a fellow human, using sarcasm to protect himself . . .

He and Stark were very much alike, however where Stark had found support, Loki had found none, all those in Asgard were loyal to Odin and Thor, none cared for a trickster in a court of warriors. All expect his mother, who was now lost due to his carelessness.

Watching the boy sleep (after nearly destroying tome he had stolen from the Asgard archives he had forced the boy into slumber), he wondered how Stark would react knowing the truth behind the attack on Manhattan. From what he had seen from various trips into Stark’s labs (undetected of course), he could see Stark was sceptical about the attack and was trying to find the missing variable.

But since Thor wasn’t exactly the brightest light bulb in the galaxy, Stark was unable to connect the dots.

And now Stark was awake again, may the Norns help him through this battle.

He couldn’t even leave in fear of Stark destroying his belongings!

-o0o-

24 hours after Tony disappeared, Loki burst into the common room, placed a sleeping eight year old Tony in Bucky’s arms, and vanished leaving a wisp of green mist behind him.

Bucky practically cradled Tony in his arms, actually growling at the others who approached trying to see if Tony wasn’t injured (a whole day was the longest Winter had been unaware of his handlers location), so the others backed off while calling Doctor Strange.

The Sorcerer Supreme arrived in minutes, a smirking Dante trailing through the portal behind him (Clint was curious as to why the sentient cloak was partially wrapped around the hackers arm). It took Dante a few minutes to get Winter to calm down and allow Strange to return Tony to his adult form ( _at this point they should have the Doctor on speed dial_ ).

Tony apparently didn’t remember anything about what happened while he was with Loki, although he mentions lots of dusty books and groans of frustration, but was just glad to be back with the team. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _A/N: Hope you enjoyed, I'll try to get more done on this series as soon as possible! Just been busy with work lately._
> 
> _LiulfrLokison out! :3_


End file.
